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Thanks to my lovely friend L. I have a new favourite website (shared first spot with MapsandtheCity.com of course). On this great website you can see the age of buildings. Different colours for different eras. Makes you realise how spectacular historical city centres are!
All 9,866,539 buildings in the Netherlands are on this map. The map is made with TileMill by Bert Spaan, Waag Society, inspired by BKLYNR. Input comes from the Kadaster, open sourced via CitySDK. B-e-a-u-t-i-f-u-l. Take some time sometime this weekend to look around on this website, you’ll love it. Thanks for making my day Bert!

(you see the various shades of blue for the newest part of the Netherlands that used to be water before we Dutchies got into ‘polders’. And the red beauty of old cities like Leiden and Amsterdam…)

Looking for a nice gift? (Probably not of much use with an e-reader, but luckily most people still have printed books.) Now someone’s last thoughts of the day won’t be on the last sentence he/she read, but on New York city instead. Not bad at all!

You know I live in Amsterdam. A great city to live in, also because of the charming canals that give the city its beauty and historical feel. In the Stadsarchief Amsterdam, an exhibtion called Booming Amsterdam just opened. The expo is about the building of the canals in the Golden Age. In 1613, Amsterdam was growing quickly and expansion was needed to house all people living in and coming to Amsterdam.The city council decided to build city canals. Booming Amsterdam gives you a great overview of 400 years of urban development. You will find maps, architectural plans and cityscapes to tell the city’s story. And it is quite the story!

And of big importance to me: two books were also recently published: Kaarten van Amsterdam (Maps of Amsterdam), Part 1: Amsterdam from 1538-1865, Part 2: Amsterdam from 1866-2012.

Part 2 is an updated and extended version of a book published in 2002, Part 1 is completely new. I had the honour to speak with the author – Marc Hameleers- a few weeks ago and he told me the project has been a part of his life for the last 20 years. The base for these two books is a catalogue written by D’Ailly in 1934. Marc Hameleers: “A.E. d’Ailly was working at the Stadsarchief of Amsterdam (the municipal archives) and he wrote a very thorough, detailed catalogue of the maps of Amsterdam. Unfortunately not very exciting to read, but the content is impressive. Don’t forget: D’Ailly didn’t have the resources we have nowadays to research the existence and availability of maps. His research is really impressive.”

Obviously, there are some big differences between the catalogue from 1934 and these new books: D’Ailly included the maps in a chronological order of its content. This means a map from the 19th century would be found in the beginning of the overview because it presented Amsterdam in the 17th century). Hameleers decided to follow the chronology of the map itself, making the overview also useful to study the cartographical developments and focus. Another big difference: Hameleers included all different versions, fascimiles etc of one map in one catalogue number. This makes the overview the books offer much more useful and practical. The Stadsarchief Amsterdam has a huge collection of maps of Amsterdam, but research was also done in other collections worldwide to get closest to a complete overview as possible.
The result of these years of work by Hameleers? Two beautifully designed books (by Ronald Boiten and Irene Mesu) with almost 1100 images. The books are intriguing because of their massive amount of great content, super printing quality (the maps look great) and the information they provide about the development of my lovely city. A must have if you ask me!

I already know KLM (Royal Dutch Airlines) is pretty, pretty good in creating extra value for their customers. The social media activities of KLM are always spot-on. But this one is my favourite by far: the KLM Must See Map. This social media campaign enables travellers to create a city map that is customized with tips and suggestions from their friends. Ask your friends about the best restaurants and hotspots and receive your own high-quality printed city map at home. (Allow three weeks for delivery.) Oh, and it’s for free! From KLM (with some help of your friends) to you. Check it out!

While having a coffee at KOKO Coffee & Design in Amsterdam (great spot because of the way the place looks plus: the coffee is amazing), I noticed these T-shirts and shoppers with city maps. Designer René Tim is fascinated by cities and wanted to capture the energy of the city in these designs. The result is called TIMcity. High-quality T-shirts and shoppers with Paris, New York City, Barcelona or Amsterdam: a clean map lay out, soft materials. G-R-E-A-T! (you can buy them online and at various hotspots).

Have you seen the beautiful recent Atlas De Wit publication yet? This book should definitely be on the wishlist of map lovers. The Atlas De Wit is a historical atlas with 158 city plans and bird’s eye views of towns in the Northern and Southern Netherlands in the seventeenth century, by cartographer Frederick de Wit. The fascimile offers you the opportunity to wander through Dutch (and Belgian) cities: take a step back on these gorgeous handcoloured maps and get lost in the 17th century. The atlas was presented with the tagline ‘Discover the Google Earth of the Golden Age’, a smart move.

It is absolutely great that people share stuff with Maps and the City (thanks for this one Tomislav)! Check out these woodcut maps. Based on a specific location, you can order a woodcut map of a place of importance to you. Frame a composition around any special spot in the world, choose from the various exotic hardwood veneers, and preview your design instantly. Each map has a unique pattern of wood grain. It takes a few weeks but then you receive a hand-crafted wood-inlay map of your own design. Worth the wait I would say.

If you are interested in urban development, social history, transportation, maps or the city of Amsterdam (or maybe all of the above, like me), you will love A Millennium of Amsterdam. This beautiful book by publisher Thoth was high on my wish list and I have to say it did not dissapoint me one bit. The book covers the spatial history of this beautiful city in forty stories. The graphic design is beautiful (by Jos Stoopman/stoopmanvos) and the book is full of incredible photos and a lot of maps. The author Fred Feddes takes you on a city trip on every page, focussing on the landscape, the relation between land and water, landmarks in the city, cultural development and much more. How did the landscape now known as Amsterdam look before there was an Amsterdam? Why is the Jordaan so different from the ring canals? Is Central Station in the right place? Why did Amsterdam’s impressive planning machine grind to a halt around 1970, and what happened after that? Who owns Amsterdam, and, for that matter, how great is Amsterdam? The book takes you through time from the year 1000 to the present day. If you know Amsterdam this book is a great way to increase your knowledge on the city history, and if you haven’t visited Amsterdam yet, this book will make you plan a city trip immediately.

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Last year I blogged about a ring of the highway around Amsterdam. Two weeks ago I found this jewel of a map ring of Amsterdam at the Frankfurter Buchmesse. Map rings are hot! This ring is done by designer Jutta Regitz, her label is called Rille and consists of bags, pins and rings made from old school maps.

When you browse Pinterest with a specific word you find tons of nice examples. Turns out there is a whole lot of map rings out there (all rings below are found in this overview)!